Palestinian hunger strike

After 91 days of hunger strike the Palestinian prisoner, Maher Al Akhras, was finally allowed to see his family. The photograph of Maher hugging his daughter has become the symbol of his struggle and sacrifice against Israel’s systematic policy of “administrative detention”, essentially imprisonment without charge, trial or the fundamental right to be brought before a court. He has now been on hunger strike for 100 days.

There are currently 350 Palestinians detained by Israel without charges. Since 1967, almost 800,000 Palestinians have spent time in Israeli jails. Every Palestinian family knows what it is to have a relative in an Israeli jail, often without charge, and usually under military law. This injustice highlights the arbitrariness and cruelty of an Apartheid regime enshrined in every aspect of Israel’s relationship with Palestine and the Palestinians.

Some in the international community, including European countries, refer to Israel as “the only democracy in the Middle East” and profess to have a shared value system based on democratic institutions, adherence to international law and respect for human rights.

How can these values be shared with Israel when it violates them on a daily basis? Building a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians is not possible when Israel has impunity for its illegal and unjust actions, does not face any accountability, and faces no sanctions for these actions.

Once again, Palestinian human rights organisations remind the international community of its obligations to promote and protect human rights and international law.

For the government of Israel, the life of Maher Al Akhras may be of little significance. While Israel has, for now, not declared a formal annexation of further occupied Palestinian territory, there have been decades of de facto annexation of Palestinian lands, natural resources and assets through Israel’s illegal colonial expansion, home demolitions and expulsions, and daily violence by Israeli occupation forces and settlers against defenceless Palestinian communities. This is the background to Al Akhras’ struggle.

As part of the occupation, not a single day goes by without Palestinians, including children, facing illegal detention, torture in military prisons, and uncertainty as to their fate in a system which regards them as not worthy of the same legal rights as citizens of Israel.

What can be done to save the life of Maher Al Akhras? Israel must end its unjust and inhumane system of administrative detention. For this to happen, the international community, including Ireland, must make respect for international law and the equal rights of Palestinians a basic condition of its relations with Israel. The reaction of US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to the situation of Al Akhras (“Israel has the right to defend itself”) perfectly reflects the approach of the wider international community towards the just demands of Palestinians. Once again, it seems, Israel has no questions to answer and relations continue as normal. Israel counts, for example, that the Irish foreign minister will continue to actively oppose the ban on settlement products and services being discussed in the Irish parliament. Banning settlement products is a basic requirement and international obligation to make clear to Israel that its ongoing human rights violations and crimes under international law should immediately stop.

Unlike Al Akhras, there is no certainty that all Palestinian prisoners will go on hunger strike. However, all Palestinians share a commitment that his sacrifice will not be in vain.

Israel’s judicial system as applied to Palestinians disregards the notion of equality for all before the law and has become a tool in the overall system of oppression of an entire people. Israeli courts accept principles, such as administrative detention, settlement expansion and home demolitions that openly violate basic requirements of justice and respect for human rights.

As Palestinian human rights defenders we cannot allow this situation to go unchallenged. We will continue to call on the international community, including the International Criminal Court, to assume its responsibilities and defend the rights of the Palestinian people to justice, fairness and equality. This can only go through focusing on fully ending the Israeli occupation and its colonial-settlement enterprise.

Maher Al Akhras should not have to give his life in order to vindicate his fundamental human rights and those of his people. His hunger strike should be a powerful message to those in the international community who have up to now turned their faces from the just demands of the Palestinian people. We fervently desire that this awakening does not come too late for Mr Akhras.

Sahar Francis is the general director of Ramallah-based Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, a Palestinian NGO providing legal and advocacy support to Palestinian political prisoners. She is an attorney. She contribted this artcle to The Jordan Times